GE, EPA to Dredge Hudson of PCBs

Published 8:00 pm, Thursday, January 31, 2002

Left with few options, General Electric Co. appears willing to go along with an order from the Environmental Protection Agency demanding the dredging of tons of toxic PCBs from the Hudson River.

"While GE does not believe that dredging is the right approach for the river or the upper river communities, EPA has the ultimate authority under law to select the cleanup plan," spokesman Mark Behan said.

He said GE wanted to play "a constructive role" in the process.

On Friday, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman signed the final record of decision, making official the plan that was first put forth 14 months ago by the Clinton administration. The cleanup along a 40-mile stretch of the Hudson River north of Albany, N.Y., is one of the largest such dredging operations ever.

GE opposes the dredging, which would cost it some $500 million. The company says that dredging sediment could stir up the PCBs from the river bed and into the moving river water, making the problem worse.

GE dumped 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the river from its plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, N.Y., north of Albany, before the federal government banned the substance in 1977. EPA classifies PCBs as a probable carcinogen and says they pose a risk to people who eat fish from the Hudson.

"We are moving ahead with this cleanup," Whitman said Friday.

The EPA blueprint now enters the three-year design stage, where the engineering details to scoop out the PCBs will be worked out. The plan calls for dredging 2.65 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment _ enough to fill about 40 football fields 30 feet deep _ which is expected to remove 150,000 pounds of PCBs.

GE spent millions of dollars on an advertising and lobbying campaign to defeat the plan. The company's former chief executive Jack Welch was especially combative on the topic.

But the company's new CEO Jeffrey Immelt has toned down the rhetoric. Last month Immelt said GE had set aside the money for the dredging.

Behan said there were no plans to challenge the EPA decision in court.

Environmental lawyers say they would be unsuccessful should they try. The Superfund law, under which the cleanup was ordered, essentially bans lawsuits.

"The case law is pretty airtight on this," said Grant Cope, an environmental lawyer with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Cope said the company can either go ahead with the cleanup or violate the order, which would open it up to fines up to three times the cost of the cleanup.

But GE still has a lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court challenging the constitutionality of the federal Superfund law itself.

A coalition of 11 environmental groups, Friends of a Clean Hudson, on Friday called the project "critically important" for the health of millions of Hudson Valley residents.

New York Gov. George Pataki said the decision "will allow us to restore this magnificent waterway to its full potential as an economic, recreational and natural resource, while balancing the needs and interests of local communities."

EPA said it would set up a field office in the upper Hudson River to coordinate the cleanup efforts. Public meetings to explain how the design stage will progress will take place in Saratoga Springs on Feb. 13 and in Poughkeepsie on Feb. 20.